Needless to say, that’s a lot of different ones. And that doesn’t even include games like My City, Pandemic Legacy Seasons 1 and 2, Risk Legacy, Charterstone, and I’m pretty sure I’m missing one or two. But why play a campaign game? Why play a game that has a story that when you’re done you can’t really play again?

The Case Against A Campaign Game

1. A Campaign Can Only Be Played Once
2. It Takes A Long Time To Play
3. They Are Hard to Get A Group For

A Campaign Can Only Be Played Once

Once you’ve played a campaign game you can’t play it again? You might be marking up a board or you might not be, tearing up cards, but you might not be. In either case, though, you play the story once and you know the story of the campaign, is there really that much difference? And why would I want a game that limits my game plays?

It Takes A Long Time To Play

You want to play the same game over and over again? What happens if you have a break and need to pick it up again, will you remember where you left the story? Do you leave the game set-up so that you aren’t doing the set-up and teardown every time?

They Are Hard To Get A Group For

And with that play time, how do you find a group who is up for that. What sort of plan do you come up to play with? We all have lives, so how do you get it to the table consistently?

The Campaign Game Rebuttal

A Campaign Can Only Be Played Once

This is not fully true. For some games it is a bit more and very much so for Legacy games. Though with a Legacy game often, Risk Legacy, My City, and Charterstone, they can be played after. But even in the case with a legacy game if you can’t, it is still a great experience. It is a story that can’t be told in a normal game.

And this is true for all campaign games. It tells a story that might not exist anywhere else. If you do only play it once, you still get an experience that is different than most games. Even your favorite games you might play five times a year, or maybe that’s just games that you like pretty well. So if you do get through a whole campaign, you end up getting your money’s worth from it.

Finally, not all campaign games can’t be replayed. While I am not sure I could go back and play Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game again, at least not without everyone else being new. There is still plenty in that game that I never saw. Gloomhaven has more scenarios and classes that I never played. Tainted Grail has tons of story and plot lines that I never went down. So yes, you can replay them, you just might know some.

It Times A Long Time To Play

Yes, this is true, but that is also part of the experience of an unfolding narrative in a game. In a shorter game, there might be a narrative that emerges, but by nature of the shorter experience and desire to be replayable, it’ll be less impactful.

So if you want to experience a whole narrative, campaign games are a great way to go. And while some can have one person running the game, most, as compared to an RPG which also matches up with a lot of these criteria, are fully cooperative. That means that everyone is playing the same game and doing the same things.

They Are Hard To Get A Group For

It is not much harder than getting a game group together. I play campaigns with two different groups, both offshoots of my game group. But expectations do need to be set when it comes to a campaign. I had one group fall apart because of life reasons, but still am maintaining the other two.

Start with letting them know the commitment. A campaign game is a commitments and they should know that. Also discuss frequency of play. A lot of times groups will fall apart because they are not frequent enough or too frequent. If they aren’t frequent enough, people forget how to play. Too frequent and it becomes a burden to play it. Know what schedule works for your group and try and stick to it.

Why Play A Campaign Game?

So we’ve looked at some reasons why you might or might not want to. And I do think that game group can be a valid reason if no one is interested in playing a campaign game. However, I think more people are than a lot of gamers might think. But why do I play them?

1. The Narrative Experience
2. Consistent Gaming
3. The Epic Scope
4. Digging Into A Game

The Narrative Experience

I talk about this a lot. I love games that give you story that you can explore. You’ve seen me play Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, some and Sleeping Gods. Even Pandemic Legacy Season 1 gave story to delve into. And I love when a game gives you story like that.

It is interesting, because the ones that I really love give me flexibility in that story. Gloomhaven more so in how you build and play your character. But Tainted Grail and Sleeping Gods allow you to branch out into the world and see more of what is happening. And they don’t tell you how you need to play it, yes, there are targets you go for, but there is always more to explore.

Compare that to regular Pandemic, or a lot of other one off games, they don’t offer the same story. Now, there is story that emerges in those games from the choices that you make as a player. Which is the same for a campaign game. But the players need to bring a lot more of the narrative to the game.

Consistent Gaming

This is also kind of a rebuttal to it being long and finding a group. For myself and other gamers, consistently gaming is amazing. So often it is hard to set aside time to play games, but with a campaign game, it forces you to do so. Like I said, it’s about that developing that rhythm. And a good campaign game will draw you in with the story it provides so you want to keep coming back to it.

It is a knock, actually, that I have against Gloomhaven. The story is less compelling than the game play. I love the mechanics, but the story could and should be better. But the game play kept me coming back over and over again. That cycle of playing cards and figuring out the strategy for a scenario is amazing. But a campaign game helps hook you to come back for consistent gaming.

The Epic Scope

A campaign game also can have much more epic scope to it. I own other games that have epic scope, The Reckoners or Atlantis Rising are two examples. Pandemic, even, with trying to save the world from diseases. But while you play, those games, that scope is just smaller than what you can get in a campaign game.

Tainted Grail, yes, you are trying to save Avalon, how is that different than Pandemic and saving the world? Well, it is different because what you need to do builds and changes as the game progresses. It might be finding the grail, but now you need to complete a ritual or more in the game. It just keeps building and building until you reach an epic finale to the game.

Digging Into A Game

And now, this is one that is very much for Gloomhaven, but it allows you to dig further and further into the game. And with that, you get to explore and understand the mechanics of the game and the character(s) that you are playing so well.

In Gloomhaven it is that card loop of playing two cards to do the top action on one and the bottom on the other. It just makes for a fascinating puzzle that then you can augment and optimize with items and figure out what is going to work best for you.

Final Thoughts on a Campaign Game

The scope and epic nature of the experience really pull me in. And they are some of the best stories I’ve found in a game. Now, the experience won’t be for everyone. And I think the biggest reason is that sometimes they are just harder to get to the table. If you’ve watched Malts and Meeples, you know I like to play them there. But without a gaming table, I have one now, it is a lot of work to set-up and tear down every time for one to two hours of gaming.

But if you can find a group, I believe that they are worth checking out. And there are so many themes out there. I look at what I have coming in, Frosthaven another game in the Gloomhaven world. Then HEL: The Last Saga a fantastical Viking mythological game. ISS Vanguard is an epic space exploration adventure. Rogue Angels when that comes out is going to be a more boots on the ground dungeon crawl space game. So there is likely a theme for everyone out there, including lighter fantasy like Adventure Tactics or Cora Quest for the whole family.

What is your favorite campaign game?

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If it’s not obvious, I clearly love campaign games. I have a lot more on my shelf from Pandemic Legacy Season 0 to Midarra: Unintentional Mallum Act 1, to Destinies, all that need to get played. Plus there are more on the way including a massive game, Frosthaven, the follow-up to Gloomhaven. Yet, compared to a lot of gamers, I’ve played a lot of campaign games. So how do I get a consistent group together?

Talk About Campaign Games

Talk with people about playing a campaign game. It sounds obvious, but I think a lot of gamers forget to do this. I forget to do this with people who might be interested in a campaign game. I own many other games that aren’t campaign games, so I sit down and play those with a lot of people. People who might want to play a legacy game or a campaign game, but I don’t mention it.

Now, it does come with a balance. I have one friend who I could play a campaign game with, but I don’t. Why, because while we had fun playing Sword & Sorcery, I realized I wasn’t playing my other games as much. So now I game with him every other week, and it’s just pulling games that maybe don’t get play that much off the shelf. Heavier games that are a one off, or teaching him new games that I’ve gotten. So it is a balance, but if you don’t mention campaign games, people won’t know it’s an option.

Define a Schedule

This one is tricky, especially as you get older. When I was in college I probably could have gotten stuff together easier. Or played campaign games more often. If I’d played Dungeons and Dragons then, I probably would have played for an eight hour session every week, or maybe every two. Now my schedule doesn’t permit that. The same is true for the people I game with. We have work, other activities, and kids in some cases. All of those things eat into gaming time.

On the flip side, we now need to get it scheduled more than before which means that we play more consistently. When younger, it is easy to go months if you aren’t thinking about it. You play for hours, but when you stop, you might not play for a long time again. Because I need it on the calendar to know I can play, that means we have a consistent schedule.

For both campaign board games and Dungeons and Dragons, I play every other week. The Gloomhaven/Tainted Grail group meets every other Tuesday. Dungeons and Dragons is every other Thursday. I keep, or try to, them on opposite weeks. That means that the one player who overlaps doesn’t have two evenings in one week are taken up and the same for me.

It is important to define it also so people know the commitment level. A full Saturday once a month might be what you need, or even weekly. Figure out what works for you and your players.

Be Flexible

This goes against what I said, or might seem like it, but I don’t think it does. Flexibility is scheduling is important. There are different reasons that people cancel and flexibility is important for that. I’ve had my Dungeons and Dragons game shift by a week multiple times, and that is fine. We know the schedule, every other Thursday, and try and make that work, but adjust when need be.

Now, there are more valid reasons for being flexible sometimes. If someone keeps on missing because they just don’t feel like it that day and that causes you to cancel, that isn’t being flexible. That’s them not being interested and they can be dropped from the group. Likely, campaign games weren’t for them. But lie things, working overtime, a kid who is under the weather, car troubles, those sorts of things need to allow flexibility.

Know Your Campaign Players

Finally, know who your campaign players are. I talked about before how I have one person I game with regularly not with campaign games. He’s played them with me before, but doesn’t always love a long campaign. He dropped out of Dungeons and Dragons recently because it’s too long for his focus and style, which is fair. Dungeons and Dragons is a massive commitment. I’d play a shorter campaign board game with him, and have with Sword & Sorcery, but I know he isn’t my big campaign game player.

On the flip side, I’ve played Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon and Gloomhaven with the same two people. And that’s taken us years to get through, I think coming up in February will be four years of us playing games. Gloomhaven took up most of that time, but Tainted Grail will as we wait for Frosthaven. I know I can campaign game with them.

I also had a group I played Pandemic Legacy games with, but I don’t think I’d campaign game with them anymore. They were always hard to pin down in terms of scheduling. And lately, they’ve been even harder. One of them was part of the Charterstone group and even with just one, they were still hard to nail down for that. So I moved away from playing campaign games with them. Knowing who will be consistent enough is important.

Are They Worth the Effort?

Clearly for me they are worth the effort. Campaign games give great experiences at the gaming table. They are completely different than playing a one off game because the story emerges around you most of the time. There are twists and turns that simple cannot exist in a regular game.

That isn’t to dismiss other games. Normal single session games still give very good and I still play them a lot. There is just something about a campaign game and a shared experience that is different. This can be a legacy style campaign game or just a campaign game, either are very good. And you get to know that feel of the group you are playing with. You know all your styles and really develop how you play a campaign game.

Have you gotten through a campaign game or are they on your radar? Have you found a good group to play with?

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This, however leads to a problem. There are a ton of games on Kickstarter, in fact they make Kickstarter millions of dollars. And now Gamefound is in the mix and that is where all the Awaken Realms games are and they are getting a lot of other really big games. So how do you decide what to back.

Only So Much Budget

I did a series of articles on Kickstarter 101. You can find the first one there and then I went into more details about what I look for. I generally follow my guide when it comes to backing games or talking about them in my Back of Brick Series. But one thing I don’t talk about is budget, or at least I don’t talk about it much.

Right now that is my biggest issue in getting board games, which is a good thing in a lot of ways. If I didn’t have a budget I would just have my game room stacked up with even more board games and no where to actually play them. Plus, there is only so much time to play board games in my life right now. I’d love to play more, but I’m generally playing once a week with people and once a week while streaming.

But That Means Hard Choices

As the header says, that means that I have to make hard choices as to what I back. Early in the year I tend to be a bit more free. By that I mean, if it looks really cool, I’ll back it and not think about it. But now, in the middle of the year, my budget is drying up, and we are getting a lot of cool games on the different crowdfunding platforms.

Just what I know is coming up, there is Lords of Ragnarok from Awaken Realms, Divinus from Lucky Duck Games, Slay the Spire from Contention Games, and those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Plus there is Middara acts 2 & 3. There is a Dune game based off of the Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game system, not Kickstarter from what I know. Plus I could still late back Deliverance or Witcher: Old World, and I’m actively backing Valor & Villainy, the cooperative legacy version that is out there now.

So how do I go about picking? Do I keep backing Valor and Villainy because it’s a known game? Do I save for other things that are coming in later? How much do I care about the CMON Masters of the Universe Game?

So How Do I Pick?

Compare to the Collection

Firstly, I think it’s important to look at the games in a vacuum. Well, kind of a vacuum. I don’t want to look at everything I know is coming to Kickstarter or Gamefound. It’s hard to compare games that are active to games that are coming. If a game is active and it looks amazing except for one little thing, I won’t be able to accurately compare it to the ones that have almost no information on Kickstarter or little on Gamefound.

Instead, I should look at it compared to what I have in my collection. So with Valor and Villainy, it’s a campaign and a legacy game. I have two unplayed Legacy games, well, 3 actually with Pandemic Legacy Season 0 that I just remembered. And I probably have 6-10 unplayed campaign games counting what is currently backed on Kickstarter. So do I need more games of that type? But also, does this one look better than the games of that type I own?

Who Would I Play It With

Is this a game for a small group? My campaign group? The board game club group? The game night group? Me? Or is it a game for a group that doesn’t exist yet?

If it’s the latter, do I want to put the effort into finding a group or a person to play it with. Let’s look at some things I’ve backed, Project L and Tiny Tubro Cars are for the small group and game night group. Primal is for small group, board game club group, and campaign group. Aeon’s End Legacy might just be for me. But does a game fit into any of the groups. If not, I have to put in the effort to get it played, and will I do that?

Retails vs Crowdfunding

Another thing I consider is, can I get it later. A crowdfunded game is a little bit of a risk. I’ve gotten a few when they came in they weren’t as good as I had hoped. Lost Woods was a simple game that wasn’t what I was hoping. Bring Your Own Book is a cool idea but doesn’t work as well as it sounds. Now the only way to get Lost Woods was via Kickstarter, but Bring Your Own Book went to retail. So I could have waited, gotten an uglier copy that was the same thing, or waited for reviews.

But there’s more to that, I could have gotten Marvel United at retail, but I’m glad I didn’t. So it’s the flip of Bring Your Own Book. With Marvel United I got way more characters because I backed it on Kickstarter. And basically none of the expansions are going to retail, so I’d have missed out on all of that content. So, is the value there to take the risk on the game on the crowdfunding platform?

So What’s Coming Up?

Out of everything I talked about coming up, I am confident that I’ll back Lords of Ragnarok. I like Lords of Hellas a lot and Norse mythology. Slay the Spire is also likely because I love that video game. CMON’s Master’s of the Universe game, probably not, it’s not a theme that I love as much, though the minis look amazing. Divinus, probably, though Lucky Duck Games also do come to retail.

How do you balance what you back or don’t? Do you just ignore Kickstarter or Gamefound? Or do you do less retail because you get most of your games are coming in via Kickstarter?

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So how do you keep this from happening?

Now, I could talk about analysis paralysis players here, but often they can cause some of the problems. But I just want to touch on that type of player briefly. It’s hard to remove downtime for any game that they are playing. It is going to be somewhat incumbent upon that player themselves to fix the problem simply by having an internal clock and being aware that they need to make a decision. And even then, it can be hard for some analysis paralysis players to make a decision.

The other big thing that you can do is play game where everyone takes their turn at the same time. Or at least there are things that people do on the other players turns. There are a lot of roll and writes that I’ll be using as an example here. Welcome To…, MetroX, Railroad Ink, Criss Cross, Second Chance, Dungeon Doodle, and more, all have players doing things at the same time. Then there are games like Ganz Schon Clever, Twice as Clever, and Clever Hoch Drei for games where players take actions or use dice on their opponents turns. For a non-roll and write game, would be something like Dice Forge where you are rolling dice every turn, even when it’s not your turn.

But You Want to Play Other Games?

There are a ton of board games out there, though that aren’t great for people playing at the same time. But it’s hard to not play some games in your collection because they don’t work for everyone in your group. So how do you get them to the table?

For me, I think it’s about creating time and space with the people you want at the table for that game. Fairly often, or the goal anyways, is to do a couple of board game nights a month, as well as some of my campaign stuff. I look it my board game nights as two different groups. There is a casual group where I focus on games with limited downtime or limited strategy so that we can chat through them for at least a little bit of the night. Then I have another game night where the point is to play a larger game. And that group, I tend to pick players who can get through a big game in a night. I know that some games would just not work in a night with some people, and no real knock against those people, but knowing the audience is important.

The challenge can arise, however, if you don’t have a ton of people to play with. And to get these other games you have to play with people who get distracted or take a very long time on their turn. There are a few things you can do to help.

Set the Expectation that you are there to game.

Too often the confusion arises because people who show up to play games distract themselves with non-gaming things. Now, I’m not a stickler on this one, I don’t make people turn off cellphones or keep them away from the table. But the expectation is that people might glance at their phone, but no scrolling of Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook while playing a board game at the table, no playing an app game while you play another board game. The majority of the focus should be on the game and the people at the table. Just doing that will mean you don’t get as much downtime as people won’t be as likely to miss when the turn moves to them.

Set the Expectation that you try and win but winning isn’t everything.

This focused more on those analysis paralysis players. But it can be for competitive players as well who might try and quarterback other peoples moves in a cooperative game. Games work best when all the players are trying to win. But winning shouldn’t be everything. So having some chit chat around the table, letting people take their turns, and not taking too long on your turn to get the perfect turn help a ton with the downtime. I’m not always the best at letting chit chat happen at the table, but my goal is to never slow down the game, especially early game, with long turns. Maybe if there is an important decision if I try and win one way or another way, I might take longer, but make decisions faster, most of them don’t matter that much.

Play a Variety of Games.

This one can be the hardest thing for some people. They are stuck with only liking certain types of games, and I talk about playing the bigger games. But sometimes you need to just play those littler or lighter games with no downtime. Yes, someone can AP over what to do in Welcome To… but not nearly as much, and there is overlap in players doing actions. Also, when a player is creating downtime, it stands out more so than just then taking a turn amidst a lot of other turns that they are taking longer, if everyone is always waiting on them. And this can be a learning experience for other games as well. But sometimes just go towards games that help remove it.

Those are just some thoughts on downtime in board games, it certainly is something that can push some players away from board gaming who might be interested. So when thinking about your games, think about how you can limit it and how it can be made more fun as you play for everyone at the table.

What are some of your favorite games with no or little downtime?

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